Academics’ guilty pleasures

Why label such activities and practices as 'guilty pleasures'? Surely the value-judgement associated with 'guilt', as opposed to 'innocent pleasures'--which I read as canonically enshrined pleasures--maintains the high/low binary rather than complicates or collapses it. How about an article speaking to academics about what objects have been given wide berth in their field/ discipline? I have many. It has always amazed me how English refuses to study popular fiction in favour of so-called 'literary fiction' (in the main, at least), leaving hundreds of authors and novels to occupy an invisible culture, an amorphous realm comprised of non-engagement; whereas media and cultural studies seem dead-set on de-recognizing literature in its many guises as a form of media (which of course it is). I think the academic community should be widening their horizons and casting scholarly nets as far as possible. In ignoring the many varied currents of popular culture, we run the risk of failing to capture the full gamut of human creativity and the knowledge that such studies would ultimately generate.

My guilty pleasures are displayed on 2 massive, world-leading websites - the study of orders, decorations and medals from around the world and role-playing games (Dungeons & Dragons and the like). I review games, often during my lunchbreak, a nice change of pace from computer science. I'm as likely to write a paper on a nation's honours system as I am to write one on some aspect of online learning, the area I research. It may not be more interesting, but the pictures are prettier!